Towards evening, when a light breeze made breathing more easy, I heard the leaves rustle and found Rino in front of me with provisions and good news. I could eat very little for I was too weak, but the little I did eat, gave me new strength. Rino told me that Bottecchia was still alive, that they had ceased beating him and that they brought him to the headquarters at Vittorio where they confronted him with his sister. She answered very ably to a long, strenuous examination. She made a false confession that Giovannino had been taken prisoner in the last offensive in June; that she had procured the false papers which they had found on him by sending to the headquarters at Tappa di Vittorio a peasant classified unfit 373 for military service who greatly resembled her brother, that this peasant had obtained a legitimization paper and had passed it on to Giovannino. The Austrian authorities with unusual clemency had believed her tale, had set her free, and had kept my soldier as a prisoner of war. No aeroplane had come to give a smoke signal. Furthermore, Rino told me that everything seemed more peaceful, but I could put little faith in this for I feared that under the calm a storm was brewing. I consented to follow him for it was absolutely impossible for me to continue living under present conditions, and because I had to be nearer friends, and had to be better informed of what was happening, to see what shape events were taking.

Therefore, after having decided that the “Voisin” would not keep its appointment, I returned to Fregona and again visited Maria de Luca, the good woman who had already helped me so much. She was not 374 in the least impressed by all that had happened and she offered to give me lodgings in her house where the gendarmes had not entered for a long time. I willingly accepted, also because I thought that by being near Vittorio I might be able to help Giovannino escape. On the very day I arrived, when we least expected it, a platoon of gendarmes arrived and asked to search the house for hidden metals. I barely had time to go from the cellar to the stable and climb up to the hay-loft before they entered. I buried myself in the hay close to the wall where the hay was thickest. The gendarmes entered the house, examined every inch without leaving a thing unturned. Finally, as they did not find what they were searching for, they came to the barn, and as they climbed up the stairs to the hay-loft, I heard one of them mumble in German, “Still, he must be here, I am certain.” Without hesitating a second they began digging their bayonets in the hay to see if someone were 375 hidden in it. I crouched as close to the wall as possible and heard the sharp points pass a few inches above my head. At last they went! I drew a long breath and the close call I had just had made me think of the future. I decided not to be over-confident. This visit probably was the first of a series of other careful searches, and therefore, I had better keep my eyes open and try every means of escaping from their vigilance. I shaved off my mustache, put on a worn, patched skirt, a torn waist and a black handkerchief on my head, as is the custom of our peasant women, and with a hoe on my shoulder I went towards the grain fields on the hill. I crouched between two furrows and pretended to work so that a passing gendarme would never suspect that the ugly old woman working with her shoulders towards him was the man with the beard whom they were hunting. But even this disguise had its disadvantages. I should not have liked to meet a gendarme in 376 the woods at night while dressed as a woman. I looked like an old hag, but one never can tell. I appealed for another disguise to wear at night to a cousin of Maria de Luca who lived at Fregona and who mended all the uniforms of the transient soldiers who stopped there. I acquired one of the Italian uniforms left in a house by one of our soldiers at the time of the retreat and I sent it to this seamstress asking her to make the changes necessary for transforming it into an Austrian uniform. The son of my landlady had a rifle and some German cartridges stolen from the Germans during the first days of the invasion. To please me he dug up the weapon and the shoulder straps from the wheat-field where they had been buried. With this and the help of a yellow and black band on which the magic word “Gendarmerie” had been written I became a perfect Austrian gendarme in flesh and bones. Naturally I did not use this disguise in the day-time. As 377 long as it was light I would stay hidden under a projecting rock concealed by shrubs which one could reach after a long, difficult and rough ascent. This little promontory was almost inaccessible, a veritable eagle’s nest. Nevertheless, during the dangerous hours the children would station themselves at points from which they could dominate the movement on the roads and as soon as they saw a platoon of gendarmes approaching they would make a certain noise and I would hide under the bushes where I was certain no one would find me. By night, however, I would take long walks about the country to exercise my legs and to visit the people I wanted to see. I then also exercised my gendarme’s privilege of searching for pigeons.

As I walked in the woods at night disguised as a gendarme, to avoid meeting anyone, I occasionally fired a shot in air. For deserters and prisoners, on hearing these shots, would flee in the direction opposite 378 to the one from which the shot is fired, and the very gendarmes, who amused themselves by frightening the population in this way and then entering their houses to steal, avoided the area in which they have heard the shots supposing that some of their comrades are there already. In these nocturnal ............